Sometimes, depending on where he has been and where he is going, Iain Gibb may be seen dragging a wheeled suitcase along a Tokyo street. People who wonder may be surprised to learn that inside the suitcase are a leg of lamb, bagpipes and a complete Scottish outfit. The lamb is Iain's shopping, to be converted later into his favorite dinner dish. The bagpipes and the outfit are for his performing, when Iain turns himself into an authentic Scot professionally playing the pipes.
Iain is getting to be well known and in demand to pipe at various events all over Japan. Recently he piped at the Ginza World Music Festival. He has piped for the prime minister of Canada and the first minister of Scotland. In 2002 he piped in a large international group on Tartan Day in New York City, with others piping and drumming "Tunes of Glory" in memory of those lost on Sept. 11, 2001.
Those who work with Iain describe him as an all-around "good guy," unfailingly cooperative and helpful, patient and even-tempered. He was born in Glasgow, the city that gives him his claim to a kilt and sporran and pipes. When he was 2, his father, a doctor, decided to emigrate to Ontario in Canada. Moved again to Vancouver in a family expanded to four children, Iain was still very young when he went to his first piping lessons. "I found my father's old practice chanter, used to learn fingering and tunes, in the piano stool at home," he said. "My father never got past the introductory stages of the chanter, but he was very keen to get me a tutor. He found one who taught the very basics, very strictly, very well." The weekly lessons involved Iain in bus journeys of an hour each way. "I plodded along, and eventually got my first set of pipes after my first year. That was a fine reward for all the practice and commuting time. But then I began to lose interest. None of my friends played the pipes, and at that time I hadn't yet joined a band."